Each morning I receive a correlation report in my email in-box that spits out data from the prior day's activity on the Oregonlive.com website. It's a fascinating analysis, and last month it told me that you're more rabid than ever as a reader of this newspaper as you had more page views in November 2011 than any month in the website's history.

Consider that the Trail Blazers played in the opening game of the 2011-2012 season on Monday night. They beat the Philadelphia 76ers in a game that featured the debut of Jamal Crawford, Raymond Felton and Kurt Thomas and the 160th consecutive sellout of the Rose Garden Arena. The stories, columns and photographs that were posted about the game ran in Tuesday's newspaper edition and were available online all day.

The uniforms, designed by Nike and touted as "the most advanced uniform system ever designed," had roughly fivetimes the activity that the local NBA season-opener had. Mind you, the Blazers opener had a typical number of big-game page views. But this uniform unveiling thing buried everything else, including the actual coverage of the Jan. 2 game between Wisconsin and Oregon.

As much as Knight gets blasted for his passionate involvement and relationship with the Ducks, that booster-team love affair ends up the most valuable and fascinating partnership in American sports.

I'm not sure what a "uniform system" is, exactly. But that's how I'm referring to my daily wardrobe from now on. And at this point, unless Nike stopped sewing the player's numbers on the jerseys I probably wouldn't know what was new or old with Oregon's uniforms. It all mostly looks the same to me for the Rose Bowl game with the Badgers. Except for the helmet, that is. It now has the "O" logo up top where birds can see it, and it's added wings to the side of the helmet where humans can see it.

Bigger point, Nike used the Ducks on Tuesday, big time. Also, the Ducks used Nike. The unveiling was covered locally and nationally. The accompanying message from coach Chip Kelly about Nike's ability to listen to athletes and create innovative products was a hammer. Oregon posed. The country gawked. Recruits noticed. Basically, the company's top spokesmodel had a productive day, so much so that that fashion show outdrew eyeballs of the state's only traditional major league professional sports franchise playing its first meaningful game in months.

Nike has done a marvelous job with developing product and staying innovative as times change. But what the company does more than anything else is understand the marketplace. It gets you -- in the simplest manner. And Oregon doesn't try to hide the fact that it's mostly attempted to emulate the Nike mindset when it comes to marketing and promotion.

View full sizeThomas Boyd, The OregonianNationally, Nike CEO Phil Knight is as much a part of Oregon's football identity as the players and coaches.

That Nike-Oregon relationship is criticized as incestuous. It's blasted as unhealthy. It's joked about that Knight is the most passionate owner in college football. He's called "Uncle Phil" and the campus in Eugene is labeled as some spoiled nephew. But in a college sports landscape littered with scandals, probations and lies, isn't it true that the relationship between Knight/Nike and Oregon is a functional one?

It works. Nobody gets hurt. Far as we know, no major rules have been broken because of it. Sure, there's a big-time competitive advantage gained by Oregon through Nike's golden touch. But welcome to college football, where gaining a competitive advantage is the end game.

A friend who travels and works in technology tells me that when he talks to kids who live on the other side of the country who play video games, they typically tell him that their favorite team is the local college football team. When in Gainesville, it's Florida. When in Tuscaloosa, it's Alabama. When in Austin, it's Texas. Their second favorite team? The Ducks. Not because the kids know a blasted thing about the football program, but because they're in love with the ability to use different uniform combinations.

Nike listens to the market. And Oregon listens to Nike. And while the inherent danger is that the sneaker company relationship is already more valuable to UO than the university-fan relationship, there isn't a college football program in the country that wouldn't trade some admirable honk barbecuing in the parking lot on Saturdays for a chance to look cool for recruits.

I suspect even the honks are cool with this.

The uniform combination thing is a misnomer. Really, the combination we're talking about is Nike-Oregon. The slight tweaks week to week and ability to call the thing a "uniform system" are all brilliant marketing ploys. And other companies and teams are already copying it.

Knight gets his share of fair criticism. He's opinionated. He didn't build the bold Nike empire by tip-toeing around. But as the uniforms were unveiled on Tuesday, and the eyes darted from the Blazers and everything else on the planet to photographs of a Rose Bowl uniform, it was plainly obvious how wise the guy is.